WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.* 1851 ... Part VII

[Barb Baker]

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH.* ... Part Vii

 

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH was born at Cockermouth in Cumberland, on the 7th of April, 1770. the second son of JOHN WORDSWORTH, law agent to the EARL OF LONSDALE, a nobleman of whom it is alleged that he never could find it in his heart to pay a debt for which an attorney did not officially apply, and who owed to the poet's father at the time of his decease, a sum of 5,000 l., which was left for another LORD LONSDALE honourably to discharge.  In his eighth year WORDSWORTH had the great misfortune to lose his mother, and before he was 15 his father also died.

 

By the aid, however, of what little personal property the settlement of the law agent's affairs left at disposal, added to some assistance afforded by relatives, WORDSWORTH and his three orphan brothers were rescued from want and suitably educated according to their future destinations.

 

WILLIAM, in 1787, was sent to Cambridge, at which university he took his bachelor of arts' degree in 1791, having profited but little from college discipline.  "His mind," it is recorded of him, "was not in harmony with the studies of the place."  He looked down upon his instructors and avoided, as far as possible, their unpoetical instruction.

 

His last summer vacation, during which he ought, according to university custom and prescribed routine, to have been spurring on the steed for its final gallop, was more leisurely and pleasantly spent on the Alps;   and the week before he took his degree, he neglected the higher branches of mathematics to find what consolation and delight he could in "Clarissa Harlowe".

 

While at school the poet had already given slight evidence of his future strength, but the muse had found no encouragement on the banks of the Cam.  During his university career the only verses WORDSWORTH produced were the few exquisite lines "Written while sailing in a boat at evening."

 

The friends of WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, as soon as he had taken his degree, strongly urged him to enter the church.  He replied to their importunities by pleading his youth;  and shortly afterwards made the best of his "way to Orleans, where he purposes to pass the winter."

 

When he landed in France the revolution had broken out, and the war of La Vendee was raging.  The spirit of the young man yearned towards the "patriots."  He himself, as he describes it,

 

    "Became a patriot, and his heart was all

    "Given to the people, and his love was theirs."

 

He became, moreover, the entusiastic friend of republican chiefs, and lingered on the French soil until the last moment it was possible for him to continue there with safety.  Had he remained, his biographer informs us, he would in all probability have fallen a victim among the Brissotins, "with whom he was intimately connected, and who were cut off by their rivals the Jacobins at the close of the following May."

 

He was in England again at the end of 1792, at which period his eldest brother, RICHARD, was settled as a solicitor in London, his next brother, JOHN, was at sea, and CHRISTOPHER, the third, was at Trinity College, Cambridge, whither he had been sent by an uncle, and where he finally ruled as master.

 

...Part VIII follows...............................